The following contains spoilers for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.
2019's Knives Out is a beautiful subversion of the mystery genre. The audience knows what happened and whodunit. So, it's just up to Detective Benoit Blanc to close the case. The film's recent sequel, Glass Onion, is also a subversion, only it subverts the first Knives Out film's biggest mystery.
Rian Johnson's latest mystery film, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, follows renowned Detective Benoit Blanc as he once again investigates a murder. This time, he's sent to a private Greek island where a lavish vacation is taking place. Billionaire Miles Bron and his friends are all suspects in Detective Blanc's investigation of a very strange and mysterious situation.
What Was Knives Out's Mystery?
Before Glass Onion, Benoit Blanc was commissioned to investigate the suspicious death of crime author Harlan Thrombey. Unfortunately for him, this puts him in the middle of a very dysfunctional family dynamic. It's his duty to unwind the Thrombey family's long web of lies and solve the mystery.
The big mystery in Knives Out isn't simply the age-old question of whodunit. Instead, the mystery lies in who exactly called Detective Blanc in the first place. This is because, near the beginning of the movie, the audience gets a pretty good picture of what killed Mr. Thrombey -- his nurse Marta, played by Ana de Armas, accidentally administered a lethal dose of medication, and Mr. Thrombey slit his own throat to avert suspicion. The details are not very clear early on in the film, but it is clear that no one seems to know who hired Benoit Blanc.
After Detective Blanc thoroughly questions the members of the Thrombey family, the details start to unravel themselves. It doesn't take too long for Blanc, and the audience, to realize that Chris Evans' Ransom is the culprit and the one who hired Blanc. In a very fast-moving sequence near the end of Knives Out, Blanc uncovers every little aspect of his elaborate plot to murder Harlan Thrombey and frame Marta.
How Glass Onion Subverts Its Predecessor
2022's Glass Onion sets up a very similar mystery and proves to also be a movie that subverts all expectations. In this film, there's another question of whodunit in a couple of different ways. For starters, there is, in fact, a murder that needs to be investigated. So, Daniel Craig's Southern-accented Detective Blanc should be there to bring justice. However, it's once again unclear who actually invited him to the party, as the host reveals that he didn't invite the detective. Plus, most members of the party aren't aware that a murder happened at all. Well, other than the murder mystery aspect of their party. For all they know, the whole situation is staged.
The fact that the island's owner, Miles, has no clue why Detective Blanc is there is kind of suspicious. For the audience, this understandably provides the expectation that there's a correlation between who hired Blanc and the killer's identity, as per Knives Out. Whoever hired Detective Blanc must be the suspect, but that's not the case at all. In fact, Blanc and his client manage to catch everyone off guard, including the killer. So, whether viewers see Glass Onion in theaters or on Netflix, audience expectations are once again subverted.
Perhaps one of the biggest aspects of a mystery film is the element of surprise. The audience doesn't know who to suspect or what will happen, though there is almost always an opportunity to guess the big secret. Knives Out and Glass Onion prove to be classic subversions of the mystery genre. But the second installment of the franchise goes one step further here and twists the big mystery of its predecessor.
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is no longer in theaters, but it will be available on Netflix on Dec. 23, 2022